Practice Your Procedure Writing with Pot Roast

I started cooking in my thirties, and I learned through trial by (actual) fire: My kitchen mistakes include several burnt dinners and one small kitchen fire. The kitchen fire was my fault, but I blame my burnt dinners on the people who write recipes. Here’s what I mean.

Recipes use a certain writing style. This style is both telegraphic and obscure. Having blundered because of this style, I think rewriting recipes is excellent training for any plain-language writer.

The Situation

Consider the following recipe. It uses telegraphic style and what I call “embedded” and “hidden” steps—presumably to save space on the page. Experienced cooks use the recipe without incident. New cooks like me, on the other hand, miss steps or do them in the wrong order.

Now, imagine that you’re an experienced cook who just opened a fast-casual restaurant, Your restaurant offers American classic cuisine like beef dishes, potatoes, and biscuits. You’ve just hired a young cook to prep the food while you manage the restaurant, and although your young cook knows the basics—using appliances, working with knives— he has little experience cooking from recipes. To help, you plan to rewrite a pot-roast recipe using plain language. This is the recipe you’ll use: